Hiding Mengele: How a Nazi Network Harbored the Angel of Death

Brazilian journalist Anton debuts with an investigation into the network that sheltered Nazi doctor Josef Mengele in South America (the majority of the time in Brazil) until his death in 1979. Anton begins her account with the personal—a memory of her kindergarten teacher, Liselotte Bossert, who was arrested at work for the role she played in protecting the notorious war criminal. As an adult, Anton went on to unearth information about the well-coordinated community of expatriate Europeans in Brazil who endeavored to keep Mengele from justice. Anton supplies horrific details of Mengele’s experiments, gleaned from Holocaust survivors. She employs interviews, news coverage, and court transcripts to reveal the network of connections, both in South America and abroad, who arranged for sanctuary, falsified documents, and ensured Mengele’s financial security. Mengele’s correspondence, diaries, and interviews provide an unsettling glimpse into his relatively comfortable postwar life and lack of remorse. Narrator Taylor Harvey offers a performance that is well paced, precise, and somberly engaging. Harvey’s pronunciation of German, Spanish, and Portuguese is especially pleasing and accurate, and her empathetic storytelling makes an impact.